Gates Foundation gives U.S. community colleges $69 million

SEATTLE -- The nation's 1,200 community colleges have a new friend in Seattle: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The foundation announced an initial round of $69 million in grants for the two-year colleges and their students with a goal of encouraging more twentysomethings to get a post-high school degree or certificate before starting a family.

The foundation is joining a small group of large charitable organizations that support community colleges and plans to spend up to a half-billion dollars over the next four years on this project.

The grants announced today by the Seattle-based foundation won't supplant its efforts to reform U.S. high schools, get more children into preschool, support charter schools and hand out millions of dollars in college scholarships.

Hilary Pennington, director of special initiatives in the foundation's United States program, described the effort as a targeted expansion of its work, in answer to the query from the foundation's leaders about what else they should do to reduce inequity in the United States.

"We felt that the biggest and most important thing the foundation could do was keep investing in education," she said.

Although the Gates Foundation has always played a role in the United States, most of the grants from its $35.1 billion endowment support programs elsewhere, focusing largely on fighting diseases such as AIDS, malaria and polio, and supporting agriculture and clean water in Africa and Asia.

Grant will aid Portland program for youths

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a small slice of a new $69 million grant program for higher education to Portland YouthBuilders, a program that helps high school dropouts get work experience and go back to school.

The Gates grants, announced today, aim to double the number of low-income students who graduate from post-secondary programs by age 26.

Portland YouthBuilders, in Southeast Portland, helps about 200 students a year finish high school, gain work experience through community service projects in construction or technology and get post-secondary education and apprenticeships.

The national YouthBuild USA program will receive $6 million from the Gates Foundation for seven local programs, including $190,000 in the first year of the three-year grant for Portland YouthBuilders.

Jill Walters, executive director, said the grant will be used to give students more financial and academic support until they earn their post-secondary degrees or credentials. The program previously could help students for one year.

Walters said the Gates grant will pay for groundbreaking work figuring out exactly what mix of support, services and conditions maximize the students' chances of completing their higher education. "There's no roadmap for this yet."

The foundation's overall higher education goal is to double the number of low-income adults who get a degree or certificate beyond high school by age 26.

It hopes to do that by focusing on college completion, arguing that while college enrollment has grown dramatically in the past 40 years, most students are not graduating with a degree or certificate.

Pennington said the foundation decided to steer its dollars to community colleges because there are a finite number to work with, they have almost no money to do their own research and development, they care a lot about low-income students and are highly entrepreneurial.

The grants announced today will:

-- Research what higher education promotion programs work and support demonstration projects for new ideas.

-- Encourage state leaders to share information about the value of higher education.

-- Support outreach activities through organizations that target kids from low-income families.

-- Identify the best remedial education programs and work toward sharing ideas with other colleges.

-- Research and promote job-training programs.

-- Provide scholarships for low-income students, with an emphasis on rewarding progress and performance instead of attendance.

-- Find other ways to support college students, such as money for child care and other student needs such as housing, transportation and emergency expenses.